Yay, it’s the festival of colors, and if you’re anything like me, you’d rather spend the day indoors playing video games. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy a splash of dazzling colors. Here’s a list of top five visually vivid and colorful games. (Be sure to check out the Part 1 & Part 3 of the list)
Ratchet And Clank
You may be wondering which Ratchet and Clank game I’m talking about…Well take your pick. They all stand out as visual achievements, not so much through graphical power, but more because of visual design. While I’ve not played all the games in the Ratchet and Clank series, I do know good visuals when I see them. Ratchet and Clank has you taking the role of a creature, called a Lombax, and his mechanical friend named Clank.
The game is what you get when you mix a cartoon character with odd weapons and enemies and throw that all together into bright, futuristic, but mostly standard looking environments. While the visual style is interesting
Little Big Planet
LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2 might just be the most unique games on this list, both in gameplay and in visual design. While I could fill up a whole blog doing a summary and review of LittleBigPlanet and its sequel, this article is about visuals, regardless of gameplay. As visually stimulating as the story missions created by the developers are, the real interesting catch of this game is that the visuals can be improved upon by users. They can’t improve the graphics, but they can make their own designs, light shows, and all sorts of other incredible inventions, many of which affect things like lighting, and backgrounds rather than gameplay itself.
I created one level where you hop on board a stone wheel careening down a series of hills while a laser light show danced around you. That was just one section of many where I was experimenting with different lighting. One of my favorite community levels from the first game was a roller coaster that spun around a pitch black level, only lit by series of spinning colored lights. While the game itself boasts some visually incredible levels in the story mode, its far more exciting to see what gamers can come up with.
Rayman Games
Speaking of old platformers that got a breath of fresh air, here we have Rayman Origins which brought the series back to its 2D roots. While for my money, the series hasn’t gotten any better than Rayman 2: The Great Escape, which peaked at its platforming and atmospheric best, you can’t deny the charm that Rayman Origins packs into a single game. With graphics straight out of a cartoon, its hard not to be sucked into the crazy Rayman universe with this game.
What really sells the visuals (which are fantastic in their own right) is the fluidity of the gameplay. A cartoon isn’t as appealing if the animation is stiff and thankfully this game doesn’t suffer from that problem. But back to the visuals themselves, there’s a whole range of colors on display and it seems like every level has something new it wants to show you. All in all, this is a game hard not to recommend to platformer fans and Rayman fans alike.
Team fortress 2
In Team Fortress 2, players join one of two teams comprising nine character classes, battling in a variety of game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. The development is led by John Cook and Robin Walker, creators of the original Team Fortress. Announced in 1998, the game once had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine-year development.
After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News’ annual vaporware list among other ignominies. The finished Team Fortress 2 has cartoon-like visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell and is powered by Valve’s Source engine.
Team Fortress 2 received critical acclaim for its art direction, gameplay, humor, and use of character in a multiplayer-only game.
Flower
In Flower, the player controls the wind, blowing a flower petal through the air using the movement of the game controller. Flying close to flowers results in the player’s petal being followed by other flower petals. Approaching flowers may also have side-effects on the game world, such as bringing vibrant color to previously dead fields or activating stationary windmills. The game features no text or dialogue, forming a narrative arc primarily through visual representation and emotional cues.
Flower was primarily intended to arouse positive emotions in the player, rather than to be a challenging and “fun” game. This focus was sparked by Chen, who felt that the primary purpose of entertainment products like video games was the feelings that they evoked in the audience, and that the emotional range of most games was very limited. The team viewed their efforts as creating a work of art, removing gameplay elements and mechanics that were not provoking the desired response in the players.
The music, composed by Vincent Diamante, dynamically responds to the player’s actions and corresponds with the emotional cues in the game. Flower was a critical success, to the surprise of the developers. Reviewers praised the game’s music, visuals, and gameplay, calling it a unique and compelling emotional experience. It was named the “best independent game of 2009” at the Spike Video Game Awards.
Continued further in Part 3.
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